A windowless hallway: three layers of light instead of one chandelier
The least loved room in a flat is usually the worst lit. Using a long hallway in a 1979 building, I show how to build light out of three layers so that you want to walk in.
A hallway in a 1979 panel building: 7.2 metres long, 1.15 wide, 2.55 high. Five doors, no window, one chandelier in the middle that the owners switched on only to find their keys. The rest of the time they walked in the dark, because light from the rooms "reaches anyway". A very typical picture, and the whole problem of hallway lighting is in it: a single source overhead makes a long space longer still and picks out every bump in the walls.
First layer: general
The chandelier went. Along the ceiling axis instead, seven recessed downlights with a 36-degree beam, one metre apart, warm 3000 K, colour rendering index of 90 or better. Seven is no accident: at one-metre spacing and 2.55 height the pools of light overlap on the floor without turning the walls into a flat wash. One dimmer for all; day to day the hallway runs at about forty per cent. Important detail: the fittings are shifted 15 centimetres off axis towards the wardrobe wall, so that open doors don't throw a shadow over everything inside.
Second layer: reflected
The most noticeable thing here isn't the spots but the hidden line on top of the built-in wardrobe. The wardrobe stops 22 centimetres short of the ceiling, and in that gap lies an LED strip, 2700 K, 14 W per metre, in an aluminium profile with a frosted diffuser. It lights the ceiling, the ceiling lights back, and the hallway stops looking like a pipe. In daytime this is the only light on, and it draws less than one old halogen spot.
Rules for such a strip that I broke until I understood them: a profile is mandatory, otherwise the LED dots show on the ceiling; the strip must sit 10 to 12 centimetres below the ceiling, not right against it, or the bright band comes out narrow and harsh; and the ceiling must be matt, never gloss.
Third layer: night
Along the bedroom-side wall, in the skirting, runs one more strip, very weak at 4 W per metre, with a motion sensor and a timer: it comes on for three minutes when someone gets up at night. The child's room is at the end of this hallway, and this turned out to be the best-loved part of the project: the child stopped calling the parents on the way to the loo.
Walls and numbers
Light doesn't work without surfaces. The hallway walls are light grey with a reflectance of about 60 per cent, the ceiling white matt. The doors were painted the same colour as the walls, architraves included: five doors stopped chopping the hallway into pieces. The floor is pale oak with matt oil.
The lighting budget for the hallway: seven spots, 42,000 roubles; two strips with profiles, drivers and sensor, about 31,000; dimmer, 6,000; the electrician's work for all of it, 25,000. Roughly a hundred thousand for the cheapest transformation I know. If you want one conclusion: in a windowless hallway the general light isn't the main one. The reflected light is, and you have to leave room for it in advance.